Monday, April 13, 2009

SF Chronicle's Flurry of Radio Coverage: KPFA Story today plus Recent Stories on San Jose Radio History, Pirate Station, and College Radio

Obviously it thrills me that the San Francisco Chronicle continues to report on radio, particularly via Ben Fong-Torres' "Radio Waves" column every other week in the Sunday Datebook section (he covered college radio and Spinning Indie last week).

But other radio stories have been making a regular appearance in other parts of the paper, including in recent months a profile of pirate radio station Pirate Cat Radio (be sure to read the comment-string for some eloquent words about college radio, particularly from some KZSU staffers) and a page 2 story last week about the early history of Bay Area radio (did you know that the first radio broadcasts of the human voice happened in San Jose at "Doc" Herrold's College of Wireless and Engineering in 1909?).

"KPFA-FM will celebrate its 60th birthday this week, and the Berkeley public radio station that was the nation's first listener-supported outlet is still the proudly lefter-than-left Bay Area institution that thinks National Public Radio is too conservative and isn't shy about calling itself 'radical.'"

The piece also discusses the station's new 6pm newcast and "KPFA Interactive," in which listeners can upload questions, audio, and video.

The San Francisco Bay Area clearly has a rich and diverse batch of radio stations, so it's nice to see the wide range of recent radio stories. Does your local paper write about radio?